Girlfriend Material

by Melissa Kantor

  When the front door opened and my mom walked in carrying a cake box, I was relieved to see that she was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. How intent could she be on seducing Jamie if she was wearing that?

  “Have a great time,” she said; and for the first time in the history of our relationship, she didn’t make a comment about what I was wearing to a party.

  “Thanks,” I said. And even though I meant it only in the most limited way, I said, “You too.”

  I followed Sarah out to her car, wishing the last thing I heard as the screen door shut behind me hadn’t been my mom saying, “Do I have time to change before dinner?”

  All the other kids at Larkspur were dressed like Sarah and me, and the adults were dressed equally casually, in fleeces and other clothes you wouldn’t have been surprised to see at a campsite or an Albertson’s. A few of the men were wearing old-man slacks with actual animals on them—one gray-haired guy we passed had on blue pants with a turtle pattern. A couple of the women had on diamond engagement rings, but none were dripping jewels.

  Just imagining having worn my dress and heels was enough to make me want to bend down and kiss the hem of Sarah’s jeans in gratitude. I was so thankful to her I didn’t even mind that my ears were still ringing from the volume at which she’d blasted Jonathan Richmond and the Modern Lovers on the way over.

  There was a buffet table not far from where we entered the beach, and a bar was set up nearby. Most of the older people were standing in the vicinity of the bar, holding drinks and talking in groups of five or six. About a hundred yards away was a bonfire, and that’s where most of the little kids were—running around and screaming for no real reason, the way kids do. I scanned the crowd for Natasha, not especially surprised when I didn’t see her. She hardly struck me as a run-around-at-the-barbecue type.

  Lawrence was standing, his back to the water, literally surrounded by girls. Jenna stood a few feet away from Lawrence and his harem. Adam was standing with her, and I felt a little tingle of something between happiness and relief wash over me at the sight of him.

  “Hey,” called Jenna when she saw us coming. Adam looked up too. He had on jeans and a gray long-sleeved T-shirt, and there was a sweater tied low on his hips. In my humble opinion, it was a very sexy look.

  The word Hemingway sometimes uses to describe Lady Brett Ashley is “jaunty.” Walking down to meet my friends (or people who weren’t not my friends) and a guy who I had a crush on and who might possibly have a crush on me, I felt a bit jaunty myself.

  As we approached them, Jenna said, “You’re just in time for the Lawrence show.” We all looked at Lawrence and the girls. I wondered if he really didn’t notice that Sarah and I had arrived, or if he just wanted Sarah to see how many girls were into him. If the latter, I felt a little bad for him, because Sarah seemed not to care very much.

  “I’m starving,” she said. “Let’s leave them to their fate and eat.”

  We left Lawrence talking to the girls and made our way over to the tables of food. I’d never seen a feast like this one—there were dozens of lobsters, hundreds of mussels, thousands of scallops. Huge bowls overflowed with fresh peeled shrimp next to which sat boats of cocktail sauce. At first I felt a little self-conscious about eating in front of Adam, but my first run in a week had left me starving. I was relieved to see Jenna and Sarah pile their plates full of food, and I filled mine too. Then the four of us found a spot in the sand a little away from the crowd, right at the base of the dunes. Despite the clouds swirling around, there was enough sun that the water was too dazzling to look at.

  Sarah was the first of us to be done. She stood up and brushed the sand off her butt. “I want to go see who else is here,” she said. “Anyone want to come?”

  “Sure,” said Jenna, standing too. “If we can get seconds on the way.” She swallowed her last bite of shrimp. “You guys want to come?”

  “I’m good,” said Adam.

  I really wanted to be alone with Adam, but if I stayed, would it be obvious that I wanted to be alone with Adam? Then again, was I really going to leave the guy I was crushed out on and go for a walk just to make it seem like I didn’t have a crush on him? “I’ll hang out here for a little,” I said.

  “See you guys later,” said Sarah, and she and Jenna headed off in the general direction of the buffet table.

  I looked out over the crowd, which had grown while we’d been sitting down. “I feel like I’m observing an unknown tribe,” I said. “These people could not be less like the people I know if they tried.”

  Adam lay down and folded his arms under his head. “Think of them as the local aborigines.”

  “They might as well be,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like them before. They’re so … understated.” Lots of the women had actual gray hair, another thing you don’t see much of where I come from.

  “Is this your first time here?” asked Adam.

  I wasn’t sure if by “here,” he meant the East Coast or Massachusetts or Larkspur. I decided to interpret it as Cape Cod. “Yeah, my first trip.”

  “Are you having fun so far?”

  Laura and I once took this quiz in Cosmogirl! or girl.com or something. It was called “Are You a Good-Time Girl?” and was all about, like, are you willing to try new things and do you make guys feel happy to be with you because you’re always in a good mood? I didn’t exactly fail, but when I got my score, it advised, Try to be more enthusiastic and to maintain a positive attitude—it’s surprisingly attractive.

  “I am having fun,” I said after what I hoped wasn’t too long a pause. And it wasn’t like I was lying. I mean, was I having fun when I had dinner with a man who seemed determined to seduce my mother? No. Was I having fun when I tried (and failed) to improve the tennis game of the angriest girl in the world? Not so much.

  Was I having fun now, sitting with Adam on a beach?

  Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Score. “I’m getting to read a lot,” I added. “How are you liking Lolita?” he asked. He’d rolled over onto his side and was squinting in the direction of the water, his head propped up on his hand.

  No way could I discuss Lolita with Adam; it’s all about this guy who has a thing for young girls. “I just finished The Sun Also Rises,” I said, changing the subject. “I think it’s my new favorite book.”

  “Yeah,” said Adam. “I love that book. The last scene is so great.”

  “You mean when Brett and Jake are in the taxi?” I said, more than a little amazed to be talking to a boy I liked about a book I liked. “And she says how they could have been so happy together?”

  “Exactly,” said Adam. “I love when Jake says, ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’”

  I was impressed that Adam could quote the actual line. “I love Lady Ashley,” I said.

  “Really?” asked Adam, craning his neck so he could look at me. “Why?”

  Um, because she’s irresistible to guys! Because she’s beautiful! Because she’s perfect! “She’s so independent,” is what I settled on. “I admire that.”

  “I guess,” said Adam, sitting up. “She seems kind of sad to me.”

  “She does?” I was shocked. I mean, yes, Lady Brett is sad, what with her true love having died in the war and everything, but Adam was talking about her like he pitied her. How could you pity Lady Brett Ashley? Without thinking about what I was saying, I blurted out, “She’s, like, my role model.”

  I knew Adam was way too nice to suggest I choose a role model who wasn’t quite so out of my league, but I never expected him to say what he said next.

  “You’re way cooler than Lady Brett Ashley.”

  “Thanks,” I said, even though I was having a little trouble breathing.

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  We looked at each other and then we both looked away, and even though we’d been sitting there talking for almost fifteen minutes, I suddenly felt shy.

  The silence between us was threatening to grow into something resembling awkwa
rd, which wasn’t exactly helped by the non sequitur with which I broke it. “It’s really beautiful here,” I said abruptly.

  “You feel like walking?” he asked.

  “That would be great,” I said, relieved. It’s hard to talk when you can’t quite catch your breath.

  Adam stood and took my plate, then walked it over to a garbage can a few feet away before coming back to where I was standing.

  We headed away from the party. At first we walked past occasional groups of people, but soon we were heading along a deserted beach. The sky was darker, and I realized Henry had been right—it had gotten cold as the sun went down, and it was all I could do to keep from shivering. I tried, though. Now that we were alone together, far from the madding crowd, the last thing I wanted was for Adam to suggest we turn around and head back so I could go inside and get warm.

  By myself.

  We’d been walking in silence for a few minutes when Adam said, “Look, you have to let me give you my sweater.”

  “Aren’t you cold?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “But I can’t possibly be as cold as you are, what with my having a shirt with sleeves and all. And I can’t put on my sweater when I’m walking with a girl who’s freezing to death.”

  “I’m not freezing to death,” I said, hoping he couldn’t hear my teeth chattering. We’d stopped walking and were facing each other. “I’m freezing to death,” he said. “So you must be freezing to death.”

  “Maybe I’m very warm-blooded,” I said.

  He untied his sweater from around his waist.

  “Nobody’s that warm-blooded,” he said.

  “I can’t take it,” I said. “I’d feel too guilty.”

  “There’s no point in both of us being cold,” he said, holding the sweater out to me. “Take the sweater.”

  “You put it on,” I said. “It’s your sweater. I’m the one who was stupid enough not to bring one.”

  “I’m not going to put it on. I can see goose bumps on your flesh.” He touched my arm gently, and I shivered, but not just from the cold.

  I took a step closer to him.

  He’d been holding the sweater bunched up in my direction, but when I stepped toward him, he lifted it up and found the neck. Seeing what he was doing, I took another step and bent my head down. He slipped the sweater over my head, and I felt the soft wool all around me. It smelled of the ocean and the sun, and for a second before my head emerged, I felt myself engulfed in a hot summer’s day.

  I’d stepped even closer to Adam than I realized; we were only a few inches apart now, and he had his hands on both of my shoulders. I could feel my hair pressing against my ears, pulled tight by the neck of the sweater. I lifted my arms to slip them into the sleeves, and as I pushed my hands down to the cuffs, I extended them toward Adam. Adam reached into the neck of the sweater and gently slipped my hair out, and suddenly it was all too much—his helping me put on the sweater, the two of us alone on the beach. It was like I’d been handed the perfect moment to do something romantic, and before I could think about it, almost before I could decide to do it, my hands were on his hips and I had leaned in to kiss him.

  At first he seemed to hesitate about kissing me back, and I got the most horrible sinking feeling in my stomach. I mean, it’s one thing to make the first move if you’re Lady Brett Ashley and built like a racing yacht and all, but I’m me. What if I’d interpreted a gesture of common courtesy as a romantic overture? I could practically hear him talking to Lawrence later. That Kate girl is so weird. I tried to lend her my sweater and she jumped my bones. It was freaky, man. Do not get trapped alone with her.

  But within a second, almost before I had time to think my terrifying humiliating thoughts, Adam’s hands were buried in my hair and he was definitely kissing me back.

  He was an amazing kisser; that boy Tim, who I’d kissed in Salt Lake, just kind of shoved his tongue in my mouth and left it there, but Adam didn’t do anything like that. At first his kisses were really gentle, almost like they were an extension of our flirtatious conversation, and then they got deeper and more intense. When I was kissing Tim I’d found my mind kind of wandering to other things, but kissing Adam was a whole mind-body experience.

  I have no idea how long we’d been kissing when the fireworks started going off, but suddenly the world just exploded with light. Adam pulled his lips away from mine and held my face with his hands.

  “You’re an amazing kisser,” he said. “It’s just like in the movies—I’m actually seeing fireworks.”

  I laughed. “Me too.”

  We both turned and looked out over the water, where the fireworks’ dazzle was reflected so it looked like there were two displays—one above the water and one below. Adam slipped his hand into the back pocket of my jeans, and I slipped mine into the back pocket of his. A group of girls who looked like they were about twelve or thirteen walked by, and as they passed, I saw a few of them looking at me and Adam in the light from the fireworks. I realized that they had no idea we’d just kissed for the first time—that to them, we looked like The Perfect Teenage Couple.

  And even though I knew that we’d just had our first (and for all I knew, only) kiss, and we didn’t know each other very well, and we lived on opposite sides of the Rocky Mountains, and it was absolutely insane for me to even consider going there …

  For just a minute, I let myself imagine that we were.

  The fireworks finally ended in an explosion of red, white, and blue, which would have been a lot more dramatic and beautiful if they hadn’t also ended in a drizzle of rain. “It would be really awesome if you’d brought a sweater and an umbrella.”

  “If only I were that cool,” said Adam.

  “No one’s that cool,” I assured him.

  We’d sat down halfway through the fireworks display, and now I stood up and dusted the sand off my butt. Adam stood up too, and we headed back toward the party.

  The bonfire was still blazing despite the rain. Because of the drizzle, it seemed to be mostly the under-twenty set who’d remained on the beach, but Jenna, Sarah, and Lawrence weren’t among them. We headed up the path toward the golf course. Just as we stepped onto the lawn of the main house, Lawrence appeared.

  “We’re heading over to Long Nook as soon as it stops raining,” he said, mentioning a nearby beach. If he thought it was weird that Adam and I were walking together and that I was wearing Adam’s sweater, he didn’t say anything.

  A crowd was gathering on the porch, but Lawrence knew exactly where to find Jenna and Sarah, who were sitting on the sofa in the library with two guys I’d never seen before and that Victoria girl I’d seen Sarah talking to that first day I came to Larkspur.

  “Hey,” said Jenna, waving us over.

  I wondered if she or Sarah would notice that I was wearing Adam’s sweater. I kind of wanted them to notice, wanted them to be like, What’s the deal? Why are you wearing his sweater? It was like if they noticed the sweater, they were noticing us as an us. But then I got distracted by the fact that Sarah was wearing a sweater and that Lawrence was sweaterless. Did that mean something had happened with them tonight, too? I remembered what Jenna had said: He’s still into Sarah. How fun would the rest of the summer be if Sarah and Lawrence became a couple and Adam and I became a couple. (While we were at it, maybe Biff would even come up from wherever he was. It could be the summer of love for everyone!)

  As I was imagining the six of us walking along a beach into the sunset, I realized Adam and I had gotten separated by the crowd. For a second I couldn’t see him anywhere. Was this a sign that my fantasies were totally insane? (Okay, I knew my fantasies were completely insane, but was this particular separation a sign of that?) Then I looked to my left, and there he was, and I felt my whole body grow warm when he smiled at me through all those people.

  A minute later Sarah came over to me. “This is going to be one of those conversations about what to do next that never goes anywhere. Do you want to head home?”
<
br />   It was really nice how she said it, like maybe if I said I wanted to stay a little while, she’d say okay. Then again, maybe if I said I wanted to stay a little while, she’d say, Okay then, bye. Asking Adam for a ride home (did he even have a car?) felt weird and needy. WWLBAD? (What Would Lady Brett Ashley Do?)

  “Sure,” I said. “Let’s head out.”

  We called good-bye to Adam, Lawrence, and Jenna. Walking away from the porch, I felt cool and fabulous. Maybe Adam would fall madly in love with me. Maybe even after the summer, whenever he hooked up with someone in New York, Jenna would say, You know, he’s madly in love with this girl from Utah. He goes there to ski and see her whenever he can. He even turned down Princeton so he could go to the University of Utah just to be near her.

  Okay, even though none of that was likely to happen, there was consolation in knowing I was guaranteed at least one more conversation with him.

  This was waaaay too nice a sweater for him not to ask for it back.

  WHEN I WOKE UP and went outside the next morning, my mom was sitting on the deck of the guesthouse reading a mystery novel and drinking a cup of coffee, her cell phone in her lap. She asked me how the party had been, and I told her it was okay. Then I felt this really, really weird urge to tell her all about Adam. Mostly I think I just wanted to say his name out loud. Luckily, before I had the chance to say something I would have regretted for the rest of the morning (if not my life), she said, “Meg said you and she have been playing phone tag.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said, once again regretting having called my sister.

  “She said you sounded extremely distressed in a message you left her,” said my mom. “She felt bad that she hadn’t reached you.”

  “No, I’m fine,” I said. This was so typical of Meg. Half the time she’s saying stuff like, I wish we could be closer, the other half she’s repeating everything I say to our mother. And I hadn’t sounded extremely distressed. A little concerned, maybe, but Meg made it sound like I’d been hysterical.